Chinese authorities released provocative artist and recent international cause célèbre Ai Weiwei late yesterday in Beijing after holding him without formal charges for more than 10 weeks. DCQ Arts + Architecture Editor Ali Rodberg was there in the wee hours to document the scene as Weiwei emerged from his home in Caochangdi — the suburban Beijing arts hub Weiwei helped master-plan as a grassroots alternative to the city’s tourist-friendly 798 District — to address a clamoring throng of mostly Western journalists.
Weiwei refused to answer substantive questions, explaining that he could not grant interviews since he was free “on bail” — a line of reasoning that suggests Chinese authorities demanded silence from the noted dissident in exchange for his release.
Ali, for her part, jumped and jumped, and managed to capture a clump of Weiwei’s matted beard (and is that an eyebrow?) with her point-and-shoot through the tall forest of accredited Caucasians.
Fortunately, DCQ pal Nick Gervasi swooped in with sharp elbows and long arms to capture this video of the poor guy, who clearly just wanted to drink a hot toddy and catch up on Treme:
Meanwhile, at least four of Weiwei’s less-prominent associates — along with innumerable other political prisoners — remain detained in unknown locations “at high risk” of torture, according to Human Rights Watch. Woohoo! Here, forget that bit of unpleasantness by watching this excellent short on Weiwei’s preparation for his “Sunflower Seeds” exhibit at London’s Tate Museum last year, wherein the artist put 1,600 Chinese villagers to work hand-painting hundreds of thousands of porcelain orbs to resemble the show’s namesake:
Considering its use as a catch-all for music originating in the general “not North America or Western Europe” region, the “world music” label, while technically accurate, is arguably the laziest addition to the English language since Martha Stewart coined “fixer-upper” in 1914 (a title challenged in recent years as Twitter spawned The Verb That Shall Never Appear Herein).
If the sprawling genre should apply to any musical production, though, it would be to that of Thievery Corporation: Sure, Beltway stalwarts Eric Hilton and Rob Garza serve as the group’s core, but a revolving, polyglotic galaxy of guest contributors define the Corporation’s identity. From Anoushka Shankar to Seu Jorge, the collection has drawn from disparate corners of the globe over the past 15 years, mixing genres to oftentimes brilliant effect. Loyalists laud the mega-collab as groundbreaking in its synthesis of foreign sounds and cultures; detractors accuse the band of aspiring to a Starbucks-worthy brand of vapid backpacker trip-hop. Last weekend, it scarcely mattered: Thievery Corporation brought its lush consonance to San Francisco’s annual “Sea of Dreams” New Year’s festival, and 7,000 revelers converged to greet 2011 as one pulsing, euphoric mass of Day-Glo.
This isn’t to suggest, however, that the conglomerate played alone: Berlin’s Modeselektor and gypsy-punk-evolved Balkan Beat Box topped the roster of nearly two dozen acts on four stages. Thievery, in fact, effectively opened for brash SoCal DJ MiMOSA, whose 70 minutes of “crunk-step dub-hop” (his words) shut down the venue before an entranced crowd that thinned only minimally after Thievery stepped off. The throngs jiggled through a vast maze of stages, sideshows, vendors, and recovery stations, with throwback candyravers, goths, and all sorts in between ogling an impressive assortment of hanging jumbo neon constellations and other visual treats. Elaborately-bearded tea mavens from San Francisco’s OmShanTea served up hot refreshments in a Bedouin tent-like environment, while upstairs, UC-Santa Cruz grads and other mellow-outers vied for prime puffing position in the aptly named Hookahdome Lounge.
Thievery Corporation, which took the stage shortly after midnight and played well past 2 am, ran through a host of standards (yes, “Lebanese Blonde” included), drawing heavily from its latest and most political album, 2008’s Radio Retaliation (playing “Vampires,” “Sweet Tides” and “33 Degree,” to name a few). Co-founders Hilton and Garza — still the band’s only official members — presided over the stage behind twin turntables as longtime vocal mainstays LouLou (France), Sleepy Wonder (Jamaica) and Emiliana Torrini (Iceland) swapped turns in the spotlight with several other toasters, funksters and songstresses. Meanwhile, a DC-heavy collection of instrumentalists layered sitar upon sax, trumpet upon guitar, bass upon bongoes until the roof of the main hall, wracked from beyond by a howling winter’s storm and from within by relentless and rolling basslines and the heat of many thousands of sweating bodies, could take no more and dropped the first raindrops of 2011 onto the heads of the revelers below.
Never before has a leaking roof been welcomed with such enthusiasm.
Nick “Diamonds” Thorburn and Honus Honus share vocal duties for nascent indie super-conglom Mister Heavenly when they’re not fronting Islands and Man Man, respectively. (Yes, the same band that features Modest Mouse’s Joe Plummer and (for now) Michael Cera.) We caught up with them after their show last week at San Francisco’s Cafe du Nord. Among much malarkey and nonsense emerged these nuggets: Mister Heavenly’s as-yet-untitled debut album should come out around the end of next year (a new Islands album is also slated for release around the same time). Their current sound is “doom wop”; the ultimate goal is “reed-based jazz” (this means NO flügelhorn), and everybody respects everybody. Just watch the damn video already. Full transcription below.
Dunce Cap Quarterly: So tell us how this came to be — how you guys got together. Tell us the genesis.
Nick Diamonds: Mutual friendship. Just mutual friendship.
DCQ: And it’s been a few months in the works, right?
ND: Yeah, it’s been about a year. We came up a year ago, and we said we wanted to make a song or two together, and we ended up making a whole album, and we just mutually respect each others’ work.
DCQ: And you’re still doing the Islands thing, right?
ND: Still doing the Islands thing. Gonna make an Islands album in January. I think it’ll come out at the end of the year. The Mister Heavenly album will probably come out at the end of the year, too — the end of next year.
DCQ (referencing Cera): How does that Hollywood guy, the actor guy? I forget his name. He did he get involved?
ND: Oh, Keanu Reeves.
DCQ: Yeah. How’d you get him in the band? How does that work?
ND: We were just big friends of Bill & Ted’s, and The Matrix, and we just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Bill — or Ted — played bass for us?’ It was bogus, but…Bill was our first choice, but we got Ted, and…
DCQ: And the rest is history.
ND: …take what you can get, you know?
DCQ: This is a typical musical pseudo-journalism question, but what sound are you going for?
ND: Jazz. We’re trying to make a really authentic jazz record.
DCQ: Jazz? You seem like you might be a little bit…off.
ND: We’re working on it. I think it might take a couple records to get it to completely jazz. Right now what we’ve settled on is doom-wop, and that’s our genre. Doom-wop.
DCQ: Doom-wop.
ND: Doom. Wop.
DCQ: Describe that.
ND: Well, it’s doo-wop with doom-like subcultures. Sub…subcultures? Subtexts.
DCQ: Sub-something…
ND: Lyrically it’s doomy, but with a doo-wop aftertaste.
DCQ: Gotcha.
ND: But what we really are all into is clarinet-based jazz. Reed-based. Anything with a reed in it. So bass clarinet, clarinet, saxophone…
DCQ: Well, we’re looking forward to it…And what’ll this album be called?
ND: I don’t wanna scoop too much, but…we haven’t settled on a title yet. But Mister Heavenly is the band — that we know. Sub Pop is the label — we’re contractually obligated to put (that) out. And (the rest)…we’ll figure it out.
(irrelevant non-sequiturious banter, cut to credits)
We also got ahold of the set list from one of Mister Heavenly’s earlier shows (not sure if this is from Portland or Seattle). Some guy told us that the track “Charlyne” was an ode to Michael Cera’s ex-girlfriend, but we have no way of verifying this, and, what’s more, nobody really cares. Song names, courtesy of Honus Honus:
Evidence — sweet, indisputable evidence: Worst-case scenario, they’re long-lost brothers. Best-case scenario, they’re two large men, one even larger body. Two minds, one heart. Four eyes, four ears, two arms, two impeccably manicured soul-tees. Half Overweight Lover, half Oh, That Guy. And one pair of sunglasses until the next unemployment check arrives.
Swiss artist Urs Fischer took over three floors of the New Museum — the ones sandwiched between the lobby and the consistently underwhelming “educational” top floor — for his “Marguerite de Ponty” show last winter. Fischer’s offerings ranged from a Gheorghe Mureşan-sized British telly booth to the assortment of oddities and aluminum sculptures pictured above (the only shot we squeezed off before security got uppity). Fischer (or, more likely, peons thereof) cast the hulking sculptures from small clay models, reproducing the shapes with such mega-scope and precision that fingerprints from the original models reappear in large form in the finished product.
Fischer also exhibited (ha! get it? er.) a sense of humor and an appreciation for smaller-scale works, as the exhilarating video below aptly displays.
That’s all we’ve got for now; our Art + Architecture Editor has locked herself in a studio in New Orleans and isn’t coming out till Gay Mardi Gras. Fareal. Read The New Yorker and The New York Times talk good about the show’s meaning here and here, respectively, while Artforum’s got the TMZ angle covered here.
And yes, we know this all took place nine months ago. Stop trying to foist your traditional interpretation of “timely reportage” on us, conformist swine.
We’re slowing things down at DCQ Daily for the time being to focus on our next print issue, slated for publication this summer. We’ll still post web-exclusive pieces, albeit more sporadically, over the next couple months. In the meantime, join the DCQ mailing list for updates (shoot an email to duncecapquarterly@gmail.com with “SUBSCRIBE” as subject — addresses sold only to our friends in Nigeria) and tell your pals to get down with us here and on Facebook. And if you’re in the Bay Area, you can now snag one of the last remaining copies of the Preview Issue at any of these fine establishments for the low, low price of a shiny silver dollar.
If you find yourself in the greater Los Angeles area tonight, drop by Red nightclub in Newport Beach as we celebrate the launch of our Preview Issue with booze, Thunderjazz courtesy of Tango & Camaro, and good times to be had by all. RSVP with us to get on the list or you’re stuck with a $20 cover, cabrones!
Who: DCQ Friends and Family
What: West Coast Launch Party Extraordinaire
When: Friday 2/26, 10pm to close
Where: RED Nightclub, 4647 MacArthur Blvd, Newport Beach
We stumbled upon this cat at Bottom of the Hill on Friday and thought he was just some dude with sturdy follicles and a “twisted” (HarHar) sense of humor.
If you’re in the greater Los Angeles area, be sure to join us on the 26th as we celebrate the launch of our Preview Issue with booze, Thunderjazz courtesy of Tango & Camaro, and good times to be had by all.
Who: DCQ Friends and Family
What: Launch Party Extraordinaire
When: Friday 2/26, 10pm to close
Where: RED Nightclub, 4647 MacArthur Blvd, Newport Beach
Thanks to all who came out to Teneleven in Alphabet City on Saturday night for a Preview Issue launch party I will hazily classify as a smashing success. Hans Blix killed it, only one party was bounced for attempted arson, and the bartender knocked $10 off my tab for forcing you all to pound PBRs. The issues themselves even arrived from our printers in Alabama (long story) in time for the festivities; sample Preview Issue page pics at bottom.
Next stop on the Published for a Fucking Party Tour: California.
